Tony Sirico, AKA Paulie From ‘The Sopranos,’ Has Died At 79

On Friday, it was documented that Tony Sirico, most effective known as Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri on The Sopranos, had handed absent in an assisted dwelling facility. He was 79 decades outdated. He was a person of the a lot more vibrant members of an now colorful solid on a show that modified Tv heritage, kicking off what has been broadly thought of a 2nd Golden Age. As these kinds of, his passing was fulfilled with an avalanche of tributes, many of them incredible clips from the present that produced him a star.

Sirico expended many years typecast as a gangster in film and Tv set, and for a fantastic reason: He employed to be a legal, and he led a colorful life ahead of he was at any time on-display screen. Expanding up in the Bensonhurst community of Brooklyn, he was surrounded by what he afterwards referred to as “mob-style people today,” and he soon began a lifetime of crime. He was arrested 28 situations but only convicted 2 times. While serving 20 months of a 4-year stint in Sing Sing, he fell into performing when a team of reformed convicts visited the facility. He was persuaded he could do that, as well.

And so he did. He appeared as an uncredited extra in The Godfather: Part II, and ultimately became regulars for filmmakers like James Toback (Fingers, The Select-Up Artist) and Woody Allen, for whom he acted 7 times. He became element of what his future Sopranos colleague Vincent Pastore jokingly dubbed the “Gangsters Performing Guild.”

But it was The Sopranos that designed him a house fixture. From 1999 by 2007, he could be found on Sunday nights as the at the same time foolish, eccentric, and terrifying Paulie, a mafia lifer with interesting hair, a anxiety of germs, hatred of cats, and a adore of observe suits. Paulie avoided the grim destiny that met most characters, for the reason that who could at any time want to whack Paulie Walnuts?

On term of his passing, tributes poured in. Some ended up from fellow Sopranos alumni.

But seriously, absolutely everyone was gutted by the decline.